What is RetroArch?
RetroArch is a modular multi-system emulator system that is designed to be fast, lightweight, and portable. It has features lacking in some emulators frontends, such as real-time rewinding and game-aware shading.
What systems does it play?
- Arcade (emulator: Final Burn Alpha / iMAME4All / MAME)
- Atari 2600 (emulator: Stella)
- Atari Lynx (emulator: Handy)
- Nintendo Entertainment System (emulator: FCEUmm / NEStopia / QuickNES)
- Super Nintendo (emulator: bSNES/Higan/ PocketSNES / SNES9x / SNES9x Next)
- Nintendo 64 (emulator: Mupen64Plus)
- Nintendo GameBoy / GameBoy Color (emulator: gambatte)
- Nintendo GameBoy Advance (emulator: Mednafen GBA / Meteor / VBA-M / VBA Next)
- Nintendo DS (emulator: DeSmuME)
- Nintendo Virtual Boy (emulator: Mednafen VB)
- Neo Geo Pocket Color (emulator: Mednafen NGP)
- Sega Genesis/Mega Drive (emulator: Genesis Plus GX / Picodrive)
- Sega Master System/Sega Game Gear (emulator: Genesis Plus GX)
- Sega CD / Mega CD (emulator: Genesis Plus GX / Picodrive)
- Sega 32X (emulator: Picodrive)
- Sony PlayStation 1 (emulator: PCSX ReARMed / Mednafen PSX)
- PC Engine / PC Engine CD (emulator: Mednafen PCE Fast)
- WonderSwan Color / Crystal (emulator: Mednafen Wonderswan)
- Cave Story (game engine: NX Engine)
- Doom 1 / Doom 2 / Ultimate Doom / Final Doom (game engine: prBoom)
- Quake (game engine: TyrQuake)
- ScummVM (game engine) [WIP]
- MS-DOS (emulator: DosBox) [WIP]
- Nintendo 64 (emulator: Mupen64 on ARM) [WIP]
- Nintendo Entertainment System (emulator: QuickNES) [WIP]
- Sega Saturn (emulator: Yabause) [WIP]
What platforms does it run on?
- Linux (x86 and x86_64)
- Windows (32bit/64bit)
- Mac OSX (Intel/PowerPC)
- Playstation 3 (PS3 SDK)
- PlayStation Portable (PSP)
- PlayStation Vita/TV
- Xbox 1 (XDK)
- Xbox 360 (XeXDK/Libxenon)
- Gamecube
- Wii
- Nintendo 3DS
- Raspberry Pi (and various other ARM hardware through Lakka)
- OpenPandora
- Android
- Blackberry (10/Playbook)
- iOS
MCQ333 added RetroArch as alternative to Attract-Mode
Comments and Reviews
I just downloaded this and fiddled arond with it for 15 minutes, but I'm already impressed! The interface (the "Big Picture" one, I think it was called) is a beauty to look at. It reminds me of a PS4-style menu...I think. I don't own one, heh, but I see my roommate play on his every so often. Aside from that, if you prefer an old-fashioned interface, Retroarch offers that, too.
I just did a scouring of the options, and there's a wealth of them. One option that caught my eye was the "netplay". I just started getting into running my own server, so this sounds promising.
Per the Retroarch website it is just a front end so you will need to download specific "cores" to run a certain game that you want. However, Retroarch makes finding the core that you want easy; it provides a catalog of lots of cores to download and install.
There's more to this piece of software that I would like to learn about, but Retroarch has already left a strong first impression on me. I'm not sure why I didn't download this sooner!
Shit doesn't read my Switch Pro Controller anymore.
The best way to emulate game consoles in 2024, highly recommended instead of downloading a bunch of emulators that probably have malware.
I was hesitant to use this type of "all-in-one" emulator for a while, mainly because most of the previous projects that tried to do this ended up being more trouble than they were worth (MAME being the exception), but now that I've learned how to use Retroarch, it's my go-to emulator for PC and Android, very easy to set up, feature-rich, and customizable.
Retroarch sucks on Linux. Never ever download it on Linux. I opened it and the whole screen was dark. I uninstalled it and tried installing it a second time. The exact same happened again
This is a common problem with a common fix.
I would imagine that they wouldn't develop software on Linux if the app showed up as a black screen for every user, release after release. Probably not a good development model.
Retroarch made things a lot easier for me since I wasn't great at handling emulator settings. Plus some cores are more updated compared to other emulators like the Desmume.
Retro Arch is easy to use, has a nice interface, allows you to play a lot of games on different platforms and automatically configures a controller so you can play with it.I really recommend it.